HOW ABSA’S TOOL WORKS

The debit or­der re­ver­sal and dis­pute fea­ture is avail­able to all Absa cus­tomers at Absa On­line at www.absa.co.za.

Here, you can view all debit or­ders that have gone off your ac­count dur­ing a given pe­riod, re­quest that any unau­tho­rised debit or­der that has taken place in the past 40 days be re­versed – and you will re­ceive the money back in your ac­count in­stantly – and stop sim­i­lar debit or­ders from go­ing off your ac­count in fu­ture.

“Such debit or­ders can be re­versed or dis­puted, with such in­struc­tion to pre­vent the debit or­der from be­ing pro­cessed re­main­ing on Absa’s sys­tem for six months. Af­ter this, the ser­vice provider might at­tempt to debit the ac­count again and it will be pro­cessed in terms of the rules of the pay­ment stream,” Mar­ius de la Rey, the chief ex­ec­u­tive of cus­tomer chan­nels and dis­tri­bu­tion at Bar­clays Africa Re­tail and Busi­ness Bank­ing, says.

If a re­ver­sal is made within 40 days of the debit go­ing off and you have pro­vided a valid rea­son, Absa will com­pen­sate you im­me­di­ately. The party col­lect­ing the debit has a com­mon-law right to dis­pute the re­ver­sal with you.

You can­not hold the bank li­able if a valid man­date to debit your ac­count is pro­duced by the col­lect­ing party.

You can also can ac­ti­vate a stop-pay­ment in­struc­tion. The in­struc­tion will re­main in force for six months, af­ter which the trans­ac­tion is viewed as can­celled.

”Cus­tomers must re­main vig­i­lant and mon­i­tor their ac­counts for unau­tho­rised debit or­ders on an on­go­ing ba­sis,” Absa says.

Ac­count hold­ers of­ten dis­pute debit or­ders to man­age their liq­uid­ity to their own ben­e­fit, the bank says.

It says that be­fore ac­ced­ing to your re­quest to re­verse an unau­tho­rised debit or­der, you are pre­sented with an on­line dec­la­ra­tion form con­tain­ing the three valid rea­sons for dis­put­ing and re­vers­ing a debit or­der. You must se­lect the most suit­able op­tion. This is in line with the re­quire­ments of the Pay­ments As­so­ci­a­tion of South Africa. The three rea­sons are: ◆ You did not au­tho­rise the debit or­der;

◆ The debit is in con­tra­ven­tion of your au­tho­ri­sa­tion; or

◆ You in­structed the ben­e­fi­ciary con­cerned to can­cel your au­tho­ri­sa­tion.

It is your re­spon­si­bil­ity to in­form the party that raised the debit of the stop-pay­ment in­struc­tion.